Anoraks vs. Soul Builders vs. Kitters

The way I see there are three types of restorers and we all fall somewhere along a continuum with Anoraks at one end and Kitters at the other end with the Soul Builders somewhere towards the center. I am no Anorak -- not because of a lack of dedication or interests, but because of a lack of money for the most part. I am not a Kitter, because I believe in the "soul" of the bike. I guess that makes me a Soul Builder? I restored my wife's 1967 Vespa SS180 from the ground up. It has only one modern item -- PX HT Coil. I rebuilt the shocks for God's sake. The colors are not true per an Anorak, but exactly what my wife wanted. I left the speedo completely original to honor the history of the bike -- the soul if you will. There are two holes in the leg shield, I jokingly said were for a gun rack on the farm, and those were accidently not filled when the body work was done. So I chalked the lesson up and convinced myself, that's part of the soul of that scoot. Now I am not saying our mistakes in restore can be called "soul capturing," but I can understand how and why restorers leave the body as-is with original paint and a ding here and there. The patina, if you will, tells the history of the bike and honors the "soul" of the scoot. I get that and see that argument. Plus, fully originally is more desirable and valuable. To be honest if I did not buy my scoot in pieces and if assembled as-is it would not be three different colors, I would skip painting it and honor the original bike. Unfortunately, that is not what I bought. If I had, it would save me thousands of dollars in my restore and produce I more desirable scooter than I will have in the end.

So where is post going? Per my previous Vapor Blast post, I was really pissed about the ground down area (not chipped after all) on the NOS chain case I bought. I couldn't just get over it. It does not look good and it was a bad financial investment as well. So I wrote Gene M, who I bought it from. I "HIGHLY" respect Gene and all of my mentors do too. He is knowledgable and shares his knowledge freely. He helps so many of us. He is honest and trustworthy and all around a good guy that I will continue to do business with on my Vespa and Lambretta.

With that said, I wrote him and asked if the wrong chain case had been shipped to me by accident, because my case had a chip on it and I expected it to be cleaner as an NOS case and he knew that I was going to vapor blast it as well.

His response was insightful for all NOS parts:

"We only had 1 NOS Chaincase cover - which is the one you got. In the 25 years I have owned and been working and selling parts and scooters I have never seen another.

NOS means, New Old Stock. So it is an original, unused stock item. That means it has had 30 years of sitting around on a shelf. Even back in the 60s when they were making these things new, they were never treated in such away as to prevent minor blemishes and chips. They were literally just stacked on top of each other - I've seen videos where the complete engines were piled on top of each other in the factory waiting for install into the frames.

Check out the movie "Mafioso" - the first 5 mins shows a man walking through the Innocenti factory while they are assembling the scooters - it's a real eye opener.

We tried to take the best possible pic of the cover as well, if you look at the original pic, versus the nice vapor blasted cover now you can see it looks miles better now, originally it was a bit scuffed.

Check out that movie though - it’s a good mafia movie as well but the factory images are amazing!"

So what does this mean for my Lammy? It means, this case is here to stay at least for now. It's cool that it will sport an NOS case and if the blemishes took place in the Innocenti Factory, then am I honoring the "soul" of the bike am some way?